Educated for marriage

After thousands of scientific studies of marriage, the one number everybody knows is 50 percent. Fifty percent of American marriages end in divorce. It’s a statistic made for pessimism and fatalism, as in “Half of the people in this room will get a divorce.” Adding to the woe is the wealth of research that has noted the severe economic and social impact of divorce on children. Children from divorced families experience poverty, struggle in school, get in trouble with the authorities and encounter other problems at higher rates than children from families whose parents stay married.